Caffeine, Like You’ve Never Seen It

By

Christopher Shea

Jun 26, 2012 1:30 pm ET

The winners of this year’s Wellcome Image Awards, on medico-scientific subjects, were announced last week. The overall winner was an extraordinary close-up photograph of the surface of the brain — all but pulsing with life — but I was drawn to thisotherworldly “false colored” scanning electron micrograph of caffeine crystals, also a finalist:

We all know about caffeine’s stimulating effects on humans, but the caption further explains, “In plants, caffeine functions as a defence mechanism. Found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves and fruit of some plants, caffeine acts as a natural pesticide that paralyses and kills certain insects feeding on the plant.

Annie Cavanagh. Wellcome Images

“Wellcome Images describes itself as “the world’s leading source of images of medicine and its history, from ancient civilisation and social history to contemporary healthcare, biomedical science and clinical medicine.”